Soviet military

Examples of abandoned or forgotten former Soviet military (Red Army) sites in or mostly likely around Berlin. Most of them were in Brandenburg or further afield.

Kraftwerk Vogelsang

Kraftwerk Vogelsang

Kraftwerk Vogelsang is a powerless power plant. People gave their lives building it and fighting over it. Now that they’re gone, nobody wants it at all.

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Wünsdorf

Wünsdorf

Wünsdorf was the Soviet military forces’ HQ in Germany, Little Moscow, the Forbidden City. The Nazis used it before that for their underground army HQ.

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Vogelsang

Vogelsang

Vogelsang still clings to its nuclear secrets. One sneaky deployment of bad weapons was so damned secret it was even kept from the Soviet soldiers involved.

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Flugplatz Schönwalde

Flugplatz Schönwalde

Germany’s Luftwaffe used Flugplatz Schönwalde for the war. The Soviets took over afterward and left their traces after abandoning the airfield in 1992.

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Flugplatz Brand

Flugplatz Brand

Flugplatz Brand was strategically important for the Soviet Air Force. Thankfully its battalions of flying fighters remained on ice for the duration of the Cold War.

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Jüterbog

Jüterbog

Jüterbog and its military camps played host to soldiers’ charades, men playing with guns, for around 130 years before the last ones left in 1994.

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Flugplatz Oranienburg

Flugplatz Oranienburg

Flugplatz Oranienburg served in the summer of 1944 as a test center for the legendary Horten Ho IX, the world’s first “stealth” bomber.

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Flugplatz Johannisthal

Flugplatz Johannisthal

One of the world’s first motor airfields when it opened in 1909. People used to flock to Flugplatz Johannisthal to see marvelous metal machines with wings actually fly.

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West Berlin’s Lenin

West Berlin’s Lenin

Lenin can’t have imagined he’d be spending his 150th birthday alone in a parking lot in West Berlin. But that’s where he is, outside Zapf Umzüge removals.

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Krampnitz

Krampnitz

Krampnitz, former military training school for Nazis, then Russians, where Inglourious Basterds was filmed, now abandoned and awaiting exploration.

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Flugzeughallen

Flugzeughallen

Brash airplanes used to roar in and out of Fliegerstation Berlin-Friedrichsfelde’s Flugzeughallen in days after the land had been used for testing airships.

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Funkhaus Grünau

Funkhaus Grünau

Look for the ghosts of Soviet DJs and find raccoons. Expect the unexpected and you’ll find it, just not the unexpected you expected at Funkhaus Grünau.

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Olympic village

Olympic village

The Olympic Games used to be the toast of the world. Berlin’s Olympics in 1936 were the most captivating games of all, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

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